James Damore, the former Google engineer who wrote a lengthy memo outlining what he perceived as innate gender differences that made women less equipped to work in tech than men, is suing the company for discrimination.

In a class action lawsuit filed today, Damore and another former Google employee, David Gudeman, claim that Google discriminated against them for their conservative views, their male gender, and their “Caucasian race.”

Google fired Damore in August after Gizmodo published his memo . Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the time that parts of Damore’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

“Google employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google’s employment policies and its business, such as ‘diversity’ hiring policies, ‘bias sensitivity,’ or ‘social justice,’ were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights,” the lawsuit claims. “Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males.”

The lawsuit also accuses Google of creating an “ideological echo chamber,” borrowing a phrase directly from Damore’s memo. Damore began circulating early drafts of the memo within Google in June, according to the lawsuit. In August, Damore submitted the memo to an internal mailing list called “Skeptics,” and it began to spread more widely throughout the company. After Gizmodo published the document, the lawsuit claims that Google’s HR representatives met with Damore and suggested he take it down from internal forums.

Damore was fired on August 7th for “perpetuating gender stereotypes,” the lawsuit alleges.

Gudeman, Damore’s co-plaintiff, worked as an engineer at Google for three years before being let go in 2016. The lawsuit claims that he left a comment on a document written by a female Google engineer in which Gudeman asserted that white men are “victims of a racist and sexist political movement and it is not their fault.”

The document he was responding to outlined how women might be silenced or derailed in the workplace. Gudeman wrote that the document resembled something “slave owners would have written for their slaves to help them understand how to interact with their masters.”

“Gudeman’s comments were not well-received by other supposedly open-minded Googlers,” the lawsuit states.

Gudeman also posted supportive comments on internal forums about then-President-elect Donald Trump in the fall of 2016 and bickered with a Muslim co-worker who wrote about his fears of religious discrimination. Gudeman wrote that he looked into the employee’s background and questioned him about a recent trip to Pakistan, according to the lawsuit. These comments led to his termination in December 2016.

“Google HR stated that Gudeman had accused [his co-worker] of terrorism based on [the co-worker]’s religion, and this was unacceptable,” the lawsuit says.

During a press conference today, Damore’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon described him as an ideal employee who got involved with Google’s diversity efforts because he was seeking a promotion. Damore has been unable to find new employment since he was fired, Dhillon said. Damore attended the press conference, while Gudeman did not. Dhillon said that they are seeking other employees to join their class action.

24 Comments

Gudeman wrote that the document resembled something “slave owners would have written for their slaves to help them understand how to interact with their masters.” Well that seems like a reasonable comparison. Like seriously, it wouldn’t be so hard to take these guys seriously if they weren’t trying to escape the consequences of saying such cluelessly hyperbolic and deranged things.

Without reading the document on which he commented, how could you determine if it was reasonable or not? Regressives regularly write patronizing stuff. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have terms like “white savior.”

Yeah, snowflakes are all about people who can‘t handle life and have to complain all the time about it, even though they got it really, really good, like being a well paid engineer at google. Snowflakes take offense at the slightest things, like not being allowed to be complete wankers at work. Possibly shoring up their own ineptitude by endlessly complaining about how life is unfair and other people get all the breaks while the snowflake is just damn better than everyone else.

“wrote a lengthy memo outlining what he perceived as innate gender differences that made women less equipped to work in tech than men” That wasn’t the thesis of what he wrote. Saying this means you’re either being purposefully dishonest, you didn’t read what he wrote, or simply didn’t understand what he wrote. Nothing about what he said indicated that women were less equipped for STEM fields. He did make a case for biological differences between males and females and that understanding those differences could pave the way for schools and employers to foster environments for greater numbers of women to be more successful in STEM fields. It all seems rather reasonable and noncontroversial, but that hasn’t stopped heads from exploding across the country. People also seem to not know that Damore was asked to write about diversity training that he and other Googlers had received. He wasn’t told what to write and had no idea people would take what he wrote and twist it to a narrative of their own making, just as this Gizmodo writer has done. Nice job, by the way, Kate Conger, of perpetuating the false narrative of what Damore actually wrote. Unfortunately, writers like you are part of the problem, not the solution. Then again, I long ago gave up on expecting journalistic integrity within the Gizmodo universe. “Damore became something of an alt-right hero” Yeah, despite the fact that Damore considers himself a liberal. In high school, I was really well liked by the drug using community in my school despite the fact that I didn’t partake of even the smallest amount of drugs or alcohol. Just because they really liked me didn’t mean that I agreed with them or what they did. “spoke out on Twitter about how “cool” he found Ku Klux Klan titles like Grand Wizard.” Uh, yeah, virtually every KKK title sounds like it’s ripped directly from Dungeons and Dragons. As someone who grew up playing D&D, you can’t help but understand how cool the names are despite the reprehensible nature of the organization. “perpetuating gender stereotypes” Just because it’s a stereotype doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There’s the male stereotype about not asking for directions. I’m a classic example of that stereotype as are most of my male friends. I’m not offended when someone points out that I’m a stereotypical male when I refuse to ask for directions.

I read the entire memo. I agree with you that that was not the former employee’s intended message. However, I passionately disagree with your other points. First of all, self-identifying as a “liberal” does not mean you are incapable of being a self-important, sexist fuckface. Placing yourself into that category tends to win you fans within the alt-right community (i.e., other self-important, sexist fuckfaces.) Which leads to my second point: His missive was filled with pseudo-psychology. What he essentially did was to extrapolate thoroughly-debunked gender stereotypes from sociological data. Anyone who’s had any social psychology background (like, a 101 class) can figure out how or why.

It should hurt. That means you sense the fault in your reasoning. There never was and there will never be a cabal of “white” men. It’s an empty concept. It’s a useless abstraction used laughably by (wannabe) sophists to promote whatever speculation crosses their mind.

“At-will” employment doesn’t exempt an employer from employment discrimination protections. I’m not saying that his claims have merit, but “at-will” employment is simply not a defense to a claim of employment discrimination.

No claim that he or any White Caucasian was in fact denied promotion on the basis of race, rather he was fired due to writing a manifesto that created a hostile work environment. Also considering that Google’s workforce is 69% male vs 31% female, it is bit difficult to comprehend exactly what his issue is in his manifesto in the first place. Also in tech roles, only 19% are female. Regarding ethnicity, 59% of Googlers are white, with 5% being black or hispanic (which is the group Google was trying to help... funny, I guess programs to improve the representation by a tiny percent is somehow going to impact white Caucasians majorly...). If he were to get some money from this lawsuit from Google, perhaps next he can finally overcome the discrimination against white Caucasians by gypsies in America.

His issue is he has biases that are invisible to him (although he attempts to phrase his argument in that Google has this issue, he does not realize that it is he that has this issue). His biases are noxious and a bit absurd, in other words he is a jerk. Yes, the first part of his essay sounds pretty reasonable, but then he just goes off the rails. He kind of acknowledges the the tech world structurally discriminated against women, but then he focuses on the personal aspect of it to suggest that programs that have the goal of helping women overcome the structural discrimination are in fact discriminatory against men. For example, if you have a company where HR is located on the golf course (i.e. men more likely to be hired) you have a structural issue. If then the company were to deliberately drive women over to the golf course (and not leave room in the car for men), I would understand that as a way to combat the structural discrimination, whereas this idiot would complain that such actions are discrimination against men. Perhaps he is right it would discriminate against men that don’t go to the golf course, but the issue it is fixing is that the structure perpetuates an environment where women vs men as a class are being discriminated against. As in all things in life, specific actions will benefit or hurt specific people, but discrimination is class based and not personal based (i.e. if you are personally hurt by a general policy that is not discrimination, unless the policy hurts an identifiable class of people... leveling the playing field should not be considered hurting the advantaged class in this context, as otherwise you would argue that existing discrimination should be always be maintained, which is not a pleasant position).

I urge anyone here with a knee-jerk reaction to this guys original document to go read it. Then watch him on Joe Rogans podcast. He was attempting to solve a problem he acknowledges that exists, and then was demonized for suggesting possible causes and solutions. This guy is not some demonic asshole from hell that you are smearing him to be. He in sensible, articulate, and has attempted to take another angle at a problem we acknowledge exists. AND WAS FUCKING FIRED FOR IT.